


the heart of an artist

by godcomplexfics (godtiercomplex)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtiercomplex/pseuds/godcomplexfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfred is a visiting art student, and Francis is the model he’s always wanted. One misunderstanding later… A love story in two parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s the April & May commissioned fic for one of my fans.

It starts like this: A man meets a boy at a park and invites him up to his room for a “lesson”. 

The park is in Paris because of course it’s in Paris — that’s only where all the best love stories are told, and this is without question one of the better sort of love stories. The man’s name is Francis, and he is as the French say, ‘jaded’. He’s an artist. Not a writer, not a poet. An honest to god artist. He sculpts, for god’s sake. He  _ paints.  _ He bleeds himself dry all over his canvases. He is an artist. A damned good one, if the numbers in his bank account are anything to go by. 

Francis is out minding his own business, smoking and chugging down bitter coffee in the hopes that inspiration will strike and he will be able to finish the fucking portrait of what has to be the ugliest dog in the world, when this preppy American lad comes up to him all out of breath and goes: 

“Can I pay you?” 

Francis figures that it’s just his luck that he’s been mistaken for something that he so clearly is not that he just raises an eyebrow, eyes the boy, and sips his coffee. “You can’t afford me,” he settles on saying. 

“Just an hour or two of your time, that’s all I need, really,” the boy begs, and then Francis notices the books in his arms, and the knapsack across his shoulders. He’s a student, obviously, and he’s not too hard on the eyes. The more Francis studies him, the more he realizes that he has very nice cheekbones and a nice even tan. (He wonders how far that tan extends.) The boy adjusts his glasses and waits anxiously. 

“Pay me to do what exactly?” Francis finally asks the most obvious question, because it’s 10 am and there's no way that this Catholic school boy just proposed sex to him.  

“I just want to draw you,” the boy says. He flips open his topmost book, a sketchbook it turns out, and shows Francis...something. Francis isn’t too sure  _ what  _ he’s looking at. 

“What’s your name?” Francis asks, wincing as his forgotten cigarette just finally gives up its ghost. He puts it out on the ground.  

“Alfred,” the boy says, “Alfred Jones.” 

“Well, Alfred Jones, you’re in luck. I happen to have the next hour free.” Francis finishes off his coffee and tosses that into a nearby bin. “And your art has inspired me. I’ll let you draw me for free and even give you a few pointers.” 

“Um.” 

“C’mon then, my flat is this way.” Francis turns on his heel, and Alfred actually follows him. 

* * *

 

That’s how they first meet, and Alfred does draw Francis for all of five minutes before Francis cannot sit still and drags out his own paintings to work on, and Alfred takes to sitting next to him and just observing. And before Francis even agrees to it, even signs off on it, he has his own regular house guest, and his own sketchbook filled with images of Alfred that he draws from memory. He never sketches Alfred while the boy is with him, because Alfred is like a storm and there’s never enough time to breath when he’s with him. He sketches him in the aftermath of their lessons. Lessons where Francis is getting closer and closer to just screaming because he doesn’t believe that people are born artists, but rather that artists are made, but then here’s Alfred and he’s just so  _ bad  _ that Francis is about ready to change his mind. 

But Alfred, Alfred is a much needed boost to Francis’s stagnating life. Even with his poor art skills (how was he even accepted into an art college?) and rather appalling lack of care for good food, Alfred is still so unique and wonderful. His favorite artists are the Impressionists yet he’s also fond of splatter painting and other abstract art. He listens to Beyonce in his headphones when doing life studies, and Nicki Minaj when doing still lifes. Francis can’t stand to listen to anything above the soft sounds of harp music when he’s deep in the zone, so to him, Alfred is a wonder. 

* * *

 

He realizes that he’s in trouble when he’s standing in the supermarket and he has picked up enough food to feed a small army, if that army was just composed of one man with an almost bottomless stomach. It’s just that Alfred is a college student and everyone knows that they don’t eat properly. And it’s finals soon, because that’s all that Alfred has been complaining about. Francis wants to help in some way. 

“Oh fuck,” he says when he’s checking out. “I am fucked.” And he’s doubly fucked because he’s speaking in English, because Alfred’s French is passable at best and sometimes it’s just  _ easier  _ to speak in English. 

The cashier just hands him his change with a wary look, and Francis gets into his car and goes home. A home which has been thoroughly invaded by a sloppy college student named Alfred Jones who is  _ sleeping  _ on his couch as if he has every right to be there. Francis takes off Alfred’s glasses for him, sets them on the side table, and then sits on the floor and just draws Alfred. 

He has been thoroughly fucked by Alfred, and they haven’t even kissed or touched, and he doesn’t think that’s fair. Something will have to be done. But for now, he draws Alfred. He draws the silly piece of stubborn hair that always sticks up from the rest. He draws his long eyelashes. He draws his full lips. He shades in the sketch with charcoal and is embarrassed by how good it is. He’s so gone, and he’s so incredibly  _ fucked.  _

It really isn’t fair. 

Francis sighs, and goes to start dinner when he notices the time. He’ll wake up Alfred after he’s done, he decides. 


	2. Chapter 2

Alfred goes to Paris because that’s what kids his age do. He’s a design major, but he’s been taking some French classes because it’ll look good on his resume and he likes French. He likes how it sounds, how it flows, how it washes over him like a lover’s touch. He gets accepted into this exchange program, and they want him to take all these art classes that have _nothing_ to do with design, but whatever, he thinks. He’ll do it because why not? He’s in _Paris_ , the City of Light, so he might as well.

And then he meets this man, this ‘born in the wrong century’ man, Francis fucking Bonnefoy, who thinks Alfred’s art is shit. But even though Francis thinks that, he never outright states it. He just tries to teach Alfred how to draw, and not just how to draw but how to draw like _him_. However, Alfred’s never been one to follow anyone’s directions so willingly and so easily, so even though he does start improving, he never shows those sketchbooks to Francis. It would feel like admitting defeat that Francis has helped him. Also, it would make him lose his reason for coming round to Francis’s so often.

Before he knows it, finals are approaching, and that also means that he’ll have to return to America. He doesn’t know how to break the news of his upcoming departure to Francis, the man that he’s fallen in love with in less than four months, so he doesn’t tell him. As much as it hurts him, he doesn’t tell him.

And then it’s time for him to pack up his apartment, and it’s time for him to arrange the taxi to the airport, and he fucking can’t do it. He’s fucked beyond belief, crazy in love with a man who thinks he’s a terrible artist and who doesn’t _want_ him. But even still, he sits down at his desk in the midst of packing and sketches Francis from memory. It’s Francis as he knows him best. Sitting at his easel, cigarette in hand, and coffee mug in the other. His hair is pulled back in a high dirty blond ponytail. His eyes intense and focused on what’s in front of him, and never on Alfred who is always beside him. But Alfred doesn’t draw himself into the sketch. He finds an envelope and puts the return address as his place back in America. The envelope he addresses to Francis and then mails it before he leaves to get dinner that night.

He gets on the plane, and doesn’t tell Francis that the goodbye that they shared the night before was the last one they’ll ever have face-to-face. He goes home, because that’s also what good boys do after having a fling in Paris. And he is at his heart a good boy.

* * *

 

He is also a stupid boy because his heart is back in Paris, and he realizes after two weeks that he can’t live without a heart. He feels like a damn zombie.

“You’re an idiot,” his twin brother says, fondly, when he tells him what happened.

“Yeah,” Alfred says. “I know.”

* * *

 

But that last night had been so magical. He hadn’t wanted to ruin it by telling Francis that it was the last night they’d ever have. So instead he’d poured his heart into that sketch of Francis, and into the letter he’d attached to it. It had said all he couldn’t say.

* * *

 

It ends like this: a boy goes to his apartment and finds a very angry Frenchman on his step.

The apartment was in New York, because of course it was in New York. New York is where all the best drama happens, and this was if nothing else a very dramatic moment.

“You should have told me,” Francis says after Alfred invites him inside his apartment. Alfred cannot wrap his head around the fact that Francis is there. That Francis is there, and flushed and sweaty, and angry with him. Summer in New York is nothing like spring in Paris. It’s uncomfortable, and hot, and muggy, and everyone’s on edge.

Alfred is included in that everyone as he opens up windows to let some air circulate.

“I didn’t think you’d care,” Alfred says.

Francis looks like Alfred slapped him, and then Francis grabs Alfred’s shoulder and squeezes it. “If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have come here. Especially after that sketch and letter.”

“That’s true…”

“You don’t get to decide things like that for me, alright?” Francis steps closer, and they’re breathing the same air as he continues, “We can decide things together.”

“Together?”

“If you think I’m ever letting you go again…” Francis mutters, and then he kisses Alfred. Alfred kisses him back, and they fall onto the couch, and time passes, but time also slows down. They’re in a world of their own, really.

They can’t even be bothered to fully take off their clothes, and Francis won’t stop touching Alfred, and rubbing against him, and it’s too much.

“Did you just come?” Francis asks, and Alfred can feel his laughing against his chest. His face is a bright red despite his tan.

“Shut up,” Alfred mutters.

“Such a child,” Francis fondly says.

So, Alfred slips his hand down Francis’s half undone slacks (because of course he can’t wear jeans like a normal person) and jerks him off as Francis bites lovemarks against his neck. And when Francis spills in his hand, he wipes it on the couch and calls that a problem for another day.

“You’re such a little fucker,” Francis’s voice is mild since he’s lying against Alfred’s chest. Alfred’s just glad the couch is comfortable since he doesn’t think he can move. He feels boneless, and alive for the first time in almost a month.

“You’re no prize, yourself.”

“Don’t ever do something like that again.”

Alfred just has to think over the last few weeks, and immediately agrees to Francis’s demands.

“You’re stuck with me,” Alfred promises.

“Good,” Francis says. “That’s exactly how I want it.”


End file.
